The last event of the “Perspectives on the Middle East” lecture series took place on Monday. Ted Swedenburg, anthropology professor at the University of Arkansas, lectured about youth and popular music in the Arab community.
Swedenburg has been fascinated with Middle Eastern youth for years, and he came to EMU to inform students about this growing community. Many guests filled the Student Center Ballroom not knowing what to expect, but most left with a drive to research this topic further.
Swedenburg began by introducing the audience to the three most popular genres of music among Middle Eastern youth; Palestinian Rap, Arabic Pop and Rai. In these genres sexual references, opinions on government decisions and resistance were heavily displayed. For some, this was hard to believe, considering a few of these entertainers came from very traditional religious homes.
A guest from Schoolcraft, Taylor Brown, found this to be very captivating.
“I like the idea that they sing about their politics,” Brown said. “Their raps are about things that really mean something. It’s cool to see a different aspect of international music.”
Swedenburg showed numerous clips of the music videos and played snippets of songs for the audience such as “From Aleph to Ya” by Palestinian rap group DAM and “Rodes” by G-Town, another Palestinian rap group. After hearing some of the music and watching a few music videos, students had plenty of feedback to give.
Sophomore and electronic media and film major, Angie Trajkovski, thought the presentation was really interesting.
“I liked how he showed all of the videos,” Trajkovski said. “I’ve never really seen anything like that because I usually don’t see things from a lot of different cultures. I thought the music videos were a lot like things that we see in America. Women were very sexy and productive, just like how Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera are viewed.
Tavell McCann, senior and physical therapy major was surprised by some of things he saw in the lecture.
“It’s interesting because I didn’t know that there were other rappers outside of the country,” McCann said. “I kind of figured it would be more vocalists. I haven’t researched it, but I would now. Some of the beats that were used in the music resembled a lot of the mainstream stuff that we listen to— just tailored to their culture.”
Unlike the United States, entertainers in the Middle East make most of their money from performing at weddings. Swedenburg pointed out this would make the Middle Eastern entertainment industry slightly more advanced than the American entertainment industry, because they have found another interesting way of making money –other than simply relying on album sales.
Muslim Student Association Public Relations Coordinator and Political Science major, Muayad Mahmoud felt this experience would be very eye opening for many students.
“We have students who don’t really know what the Middle Eastern pop culture is all about,” Mahmoud said. “The fact that this increasing pop culture is in the Middle East, brings hope to changing how society used to be. The Middle East is viewed as being closed, religious and extreme, but it’s not really like that.”
